Ayatollah Khamenei announces Iranian missile defense

Perhaps as he ponders which flying carpet would best suite his nations air force, elderly Ayatollah Khamenei instructed his news service to announce Iranian missile defense.

Iran claims that it has successfully tested its Bavar 373 long-range surface-to-air missile system in a ballistic missile defense role. True or not, the announcement comes as Israel is expanding its own conventional ballistic missile and long-range rocket artillery capabilities, some of which it has already used against Iranian interests in neighboring Syria, as part of a larger plan to create a new “Missile Corps.”

Iranian Air Defense Force Brigadier General Mahmoud Ebrahiminejad, Deputy Commander of the Khatam al-Anbia Air Defense Base said that the test had occurred in 2017 during an interview with Iran’s Tasnim News Agency on Sept. 10, 2018. Iran has been working on the Bavar 373 since at least 2011 and declared that it completed its initial operational evaluation in January 2018.